Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement

John M. Bryson

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119071617
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

The essential planning resource and framework for nonprofit leaders

Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations is the comprehensive, practical guide to building and sustaining a more effective organization. Solid strategy is now more important than ever, and this book provides a clear framework for designing and implementing an effective and efficient planning process. From identifying stakeholders and clarifying a shared vision, to implementing plans and revising strategies, the discussion covers all aspects of the process to help you keep your organization united and on track into the future. The field's leading authority shares insight, advice, helpful tools, and specific techniques, alongside a widely used and well-regarded approach to real-world planning. This new fifth edition includes new case studies and examples along with up-to-date resources and references, and new multimedia-related content.

Innovation and creativity produce great ideas, but these ideas must be collected and organized into an actionable plan supported by a coalition of support to make your organization great. This book provides expert guidance and perspective to help you bring everything together into a workable organizational strategy.

• Discover an effective approach to the strategic planning process
• Identify issues, establish a vision, clarify mandates, and implement plans
• Manage the process with continual learning and revising
• Link unique assets and abilities to better accomplish the central mission

Public and nonprofit leaders are forever striving to do more with less, and great strategic planning can help you build efficiency and effectiveness into your organization's everyday operations. Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations provides the framework and tools you need to start planning for tomorrow today.

PART ONE
UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

The environments of public and nonprofit organizations have become not only increasingly uncertain in recent years but also more tightly interconnected; thus, changes anywhere in the system reverberate unpredictably—and often chaotically and dangerously—throughout society. This increased uncertainty and interconnectedness requires a fivefold response from public and nonprofit organizations (collaborations and communities). First, these organizations must think and learn strategically as never before. Second, they must translate their insights into effective strategies to cope with their changed circumstances and to ensure resilience and sustainability for the future. Third, they must develop the rationales necessary to lay the groundwork for the adoption and implementation of their strategies. Fourth, they must build coalitions that are large enough and strong enough to adopt desirable strategies and protect them during implementation. And fifth, they must build capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and strategic change.

Strategic planning can help leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations think, learn, and act strategically. Chapter 1 introduces strategic planning, its potential benefits, and some of its limitations. The chapter discusses what strategic planning is not and in which circumstances it is probably not appropriate, and it presents my views about why strategic planning is an intelligent practice that is here to stay—because of its capacity, at its best, to incorporate both substantive, procedural, and political rationality. The chapter concludes by introducing three organizations that have used a strategic planning process to produce significant changes. Their experiences will be used throughout the book to illustrate the dynamics of strategic planning.

Part One concludes with an overview of my preferred strategic planning process (Chapter 2). The process was designed specifically to help public and nonprofit organizations (collaborations and communities) think, act, and learn strategically. The process, called the Strategy Change Cycle, is typically very fluid, iterative, and dynamic in practice but nonetheless allows for a reasonably orderly, participative, and effective approach to determining how best to achieve what is best for an organization and creates real public value. Chapter 2 also highlights several process design issues that will be addressed throughout the book.

A key point to be emphasized again and again: The important activities are strategic thinking, acting, and learning, not strategic planning per se. Indeed, if any particular approach to strategic planning gets in the way of strategic thought, action, and learning, that planning approach should be scrapped.

CHAPTER ONE
Why Strategic Planning Is More Important Than Ever

If you don't like change, leave it here.

—Sign on the tip jar in a coffee shop

Leaders and managers of governments, public agencies of all sorts, nonprofit organizations, and communities face numerous and difficult challenges. Consider, for example, the dizzying number of trends and events affecting the United States and the rest of the world in the past two decades. What follows is my list (you will have your own):

• Technology has always been a game changer, but the speed and scale of the changes seem to be accelerating. In recent decades, technology has wrought dramatic changes in the workplace, social interactions, information and opinion sharing, politics, financial systems, health care, security systems, global interconnectedness, and so on. There has been a dramatic growth in the use of information technology, social media, e-commerce, and e-government. The nature of work is changing, and careers are being redefined.
• Population flows, including migration, immigration, and refugees, have altered numerous societies and landscapes and affected demographics, workforces, and politics. Large parts of the Middle East have been destabilized, and in its wake, there has been enormous human suffering, redistributions of people, and challenges for the rest of the world. China is in the midst of the largest migration in human history as a result of massive moves from rural areas to cities. The 2016 U.S. presidential election, the United Kingdom's 2016 decision to exit the European Union, and the politics of other EU and other countries have all been affected by responses to large movements of people within and across borders.
• Aging and diversifying populations are affecting workplaces, politics, and public finances. In advanced economies, business and government leaders wonder where needed workers will come from as populations age, huge numbers of workers retire, and the need for skilled workers increases. They also wonder how to pay for benefits to retirees. National and local politics and cultures are having to adapt to changing demographics, the changing nature of families, and spatial sorting by social and political preferences.
• Climate change is real, whether you believe humans have much to do with it or not. And regardless of the causes, there is a huge need to develop effective ways to mitigate its effects and recover from its downsides. For example, the oceans are already rising and the effects of a collapse of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and subsequent rises would be devastating.
• Inequality in the United States has increased substantially since the 1970s and is about where it was in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. A number of scholars and social commentators argue that such inequality is seriously destabilizing both economically and politically. Others would agree and add that economic benefits should be shared more equally on moral grounds. Meanwhile, the level of absolute poverty globally has diminished dramatically in the past 30 years as a consequence of more open and effective markets and effective government action. Clearly, this should rank as one of the great human achievements. Yet inequality within many countries can still be a cause of major instability, and the moral argument for greater equality also carries weight with many people.
• Violence in general is down globally and in the United States, yet public safety is always an issue. Worryingly, there has been a recent rise in the murder rate in the 30 largest U.S. cities even though crime nationwide remains near all-time lows. The United States experiences 30,000 gun deaths a year. When compared with gun deaths in other countries, outside of war and terrorist engagements, this number is astronomically high. Some argue that strong gun controls are needed, whereas others argue that fewer controls will lead to greater safety. So far, the latter argument is winning—we have close to as many guns as people in the country, and the deaths continue.
• When it comes to game changers, nuclear war is always a threat. North Korea may soon have missiles with serviceable nuclear warheads capable of reaching its neighbors and even the United States. We can only hope nuclear weapons are never used by anyone. Meanwhile, terrorist organizations are constantly trying to acquire nuclear capabilities.
• Terrorism is a growing challenge, whether inspired by Islamic jihadism, nationalism of various sorts, or racism. Let's hope that countries around the world, including the United States, find ways to reduce terrorism through a panoply of political, social, economic, educational, diplomatic, military, and policing means.
• Economic management is becoming more difficult. Since 2000, we have seen huge bubbles in the housing and stock markets followed by long bear markets, recessions, and slow recoveries worldwide. Global interconnectedness, a belief in government austerity policies no matter the context, weakened or threatened central banking institutions, and an unwillingness by many governments to pursue fiscal policies to prevent recessions only make the challenges of effective economic management more difficult going forward. Although as I write we are now in the midst of one of the longest bull markets in U.S. history, what can and will be done in response to the next big downturn is an open question.
• It seems like there are no icons left to knock down. According to a 2016 Gallup Poll, the only U.S. institutions in which more than 50 percent of the public had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence were the military (73 percent), small business (68 percent), and the police (56 percent). Of the 15 institutions listed, Congress was at the bottom with 9 percent. In other words, in the United States, trust in almost every institution is very low, their perceived legitimacy is also in question, and whom and what to believe is up for grabs. Meanwhile, partisanship is at pre–Civil War levels—and we know how that turned out. One can rightly worry about the future of our republic and democracy itself. Even worse, this crisis in confidence in the institutions countries need to govern themselves and to prosper is apparently worldwide.
• Perhaps most ominous, in the United States, we have experienced a dramatic decline in social capital in recent decades, especially among the less educated and less well off. Defined as good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse, social capital is a crucial factor in building and maintaining personal and family physical and mental health as well as strong communities. The younger generation in general is not very interested in politics, not very trustful of politicians or others, cynical about public affairs, and less inclined to participate in enduring social organizations, such as unions, political parties, or churches (Putnam, Feldstein, & Cohen, 2004).
• As a result of all these trends and events, it is not surprising that in the United States and elsewhere, we have seen sustained attention paid to questions of government and nonprofit organizational design, financing, management, performance, and accountability as part of the process of addressing these and other concerns. Indeed, in the public sector, change—though not necessarily dramatic or rapid change—is the rule rather than the exception (Kettl, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; Light, 1997).

So do I have your attention? Organizations that want to survive, prosper, and do good and important work must respond to the challenges the world presents. Their response may be to do what they have always done, only better, but they may also need to shift their focus and strategies. Although organizations typically experience long periods of relative stability when change is incremental, they also typically encounter periods of dramatic and rapid change (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). These periods of organizational change may be exciting, but they also can be anxiety producing—or even terrifying. As geologist Derek V. Ager notes, “The history of any one part of the earth…consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of terror” (Gould, 1980, p. 185). He might as well have been talking about organizational life!

These economic, social, political, technological, environmental, and organizational changes are aggravated by the interconnectedness of the world. Changes anywhere typically result in changes elsewhere, making efficacious self-directed behavior problematic at best. As Booker Prize–winning novelist Salmon Rushdie said, “Most of what matters in your life happens in your absence” (1981, p. 19). More recently, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Junot Díaz asserted, “It's never the changes we want that change everything” (2008, p. 51). Only if you are lucky are the changes for the better; often “the best things in life happen when you don't get what you think you want” (Bakewell, 2010, p. 333).

This increasing interconnectedness is perhaps most apparent in the blurring of three traditionally important distinctions—between domestic and international spheres; between policy areas; and between public, private, and nonprofit sectors (Kettl, 2008 2015a, 2015c). The U.S. economy is now intimately integrated with the economies of the rest of the world, and events abroad have domestic repercussions. Distinctions between policy areas are also hard to maintain. For example, both educational policy and arts or cultural policy are seen as types of economic development policies to help communities and firms compete more effectively. Streng...